Applications open for American Express Leadership Academy

Deadline: 26 February 2024

Are you ready to drive change forward in your organization and help grow the foundations needed for the future success of the non-profit sector? Apply for American Express Leadership Academy.

For over a decade the American Express Leadership Academy has aimed to strengthen the non-profit sector by building the capacity of its leaders.

The programme is transformative by design. It gives non-profit leaders from diverse specialities and organizations a unique opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences, address current and future challenges within the sector, as well as gain insight from key leaders in social, public and private sectors.

Programme Themes

Resilient Changemakers Assessment
- Developing a blueprint for your learning on the programme
  - 360 evaluation
    - Complete a 360-evaluation focusing on the core elements of the Resilient Changemakers model.
  - Personal coaching
    - Following your 360 you will have the opportunity to partake in a series of 1:1 coaching experiences.
Leading Beyond Authority
- How to lead successfully with limited power
  - Influence outside your remit
    - Formulate strategies that support how to influence outside of your remit (particularly when you have limited decision making power.
  - Personal agility
    - Explore the concept of agility, how to better manage, and lead people through change and move organizations forward with purpose.
  - The innovator’s mindset
    - Learn to recognize how innovators work in practice, what sets them apart and its role in effective problem solving.
Building Resilience
- How to thrive in uncertainty and ambiguity
  - Personal resilience
    - Explore your inner resources, learn how to manage worry and uncertainty, and discover how to protect your wellbeing in challenging times.
  - Imposter syndrome
    - Consider ways to build your confidence, self-awareness, and sense of self-worth as a leader.
Storytelling for connection
- How to connect at deeper levels with other people
  - Communication in practice
    - Investigate the tools and frameworks that can help craft a resonating narrative with internal and external audiences to build greater connections.
  - Personal brand
    - Explore the concept of authentic leadership and discover your own personal brand, how to protect it and leverage it.

What you can expect on your programme?

Active transformational learning
- Highly interactive, hands-on format, experiential, social learning offering an opportunity to practice new behaviours and learn by doing.
Real world
- Rooted in real and live issues in a local context. Explored through the eyes of inspirational leaders who share how leadership works in their world.
Powerful networks
- Access to ongoing support from a diverse peer group and where you can work together on personal leadership challenges that matter to you.
World class facilitators
- Our facilitators co-design an experiential journey and psychologically safe space for learning in partnership with you, creating the conditions for rich feedback, open sharing, and experimentation
Skills, mindsets & knowledge
- We explore the three conditions needed to thrive in an ever-changing world, from attitudes and perspectives, to taking an actionable approach
Practical tools and tactics
- Real takeaways that you can continue to practice and apply in your everyday work

Eligibility Criteria

The Academy is for people in the non-profit sector who are intentionally striving to be better equipped to respond adaptively to challenges, and to keep going in the face of adversity.
As a Resilient Changemaker you are looking to:
- Have a growth mindset and be continually learning
- Have (or are striving for) high levels of grit and perseverance
- See failures as minor setbacks, with the tenacity to bounce back quickly and turn challenges into opportunities
- Maintain a positive attitude when faced with change
- Set the pace when learning from the front
- Take creative action to drive innovation
In so doing you can move your organization forward, with a greater potential to create a wider impact in society, because you are better able to cope with the pressures of our modern world.

Deadlines